Quantum Cryptography Secures the Electrical Grid

Renewable energy sources are slowly building their presence in the nation's electric grid system.

The grid readily supplies the energy demand of the country, which is now projected to rise 30 percent by 2035. The increasing availability of renewable energy reserves hopes to balance out the rise in demand while providing an environmentally friendly form of sustenance. However, the intricacy of renewable energy requires sophisticated methods of grid operation for both energy management and security applications.

The variability of renewable sources are mainly caused by weather fluctuation, but can also be complicated by their long-distance location from heavily populated areas. This uncertainty is handled by grid management systems that properly allocate available renewable energy sources when available, but also quickly switches the energy supply to conventional reserves when a deficit occurs; a similar method is employed for energy excesses. To safeguard the grid's management system, scientists hope to employ the latest encrypted data security measure -- quantum cryptography.

A team of researchers at the Los Alamos National Laboratory has successfully demonstrated the use of the new technology to safeguard data transmission. Quantum cryptography exploits the use of physics, rather than mathematical methods, to safely transmit data over long distances. By polarizing the spin of each individual photon in a string, one can transmit packets of polarized photons through fiber-optic cable to a receiver who then measures the photon spin data at the other end. This data can then be converted into a binary code sequence containing any pertinent information. Since quantum mechanics ensures that observing quantum data, in this case the photons, changes the data, one can easily detect an eavesdropper between the transmission endpoints.

The new technology is based on a recently developed Quantum Cryptography transmitter that supports the advance security measure at a low latency of 120 ms for every 125 km distances. The researchers hope to help energy providers detect any unwanted tampering to the grid's energy supply, especially with the added complexity of renewable energy management. The team is now in search of funding for a next-gen transmitter designed for mass production. Quantum cryptography may soon be the way of safeguarding all of our data.

@cabe, the translation of the spin of a single photon at the receiving end is nothing short of Star Trek tech. The way eavesdroppers can be detected is also a plus. The grid has needed more security for some time now.

Thanks for covering the important subject of grid management, especially the fact that utilities use it to mix and match various sources of renewable energy as needed. And the fact that without such security systems, data transmitted can be intercepted.

The fact that a single grid issue caused one of the largest outages on the east coast, and let the company Enron take advantage of the west coast is why we need better protection for the grid. Redundancies and communication protection is essential.

Yep, lived here all my life. A federal court ruled yesterday that we're supposed to get rebates from that mess--finally! After more than 10 years. http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-court-says-rebates-due-california-20130404,0,5301337.story

Cabe, thanks for the reminder of different technology "vocabularies." I've seen both k and M used in more general contexts to mean thousand, but only MM to mean million. But perhaps general usage is also changing: I just saw M to indicate million in a newspaper article.

1. from wiki - A town is only said to have achieved grid connection when it is connected to several redundant sources, generally involving long-distance transmission.

2. from wiki - This redundancy is limited. Existing national or regional grids simply provide the interconnection of facilities to utilize whatever redundancy is available. The exact stage of development at which the supply structure becomes a grid is arbitrary. Similarly, the term national grid is something of an anachronism in many parts of the world, as transmission cables now frequently cross national boundaries. The terms distribution grid for local connections and transmission grid for long-distance transmissions are therefore preferred, but national grid is often still used for the overall structure.

3. The gov is continually looking into grid storage, regulation, and fortification for quite some time now.

4. A lot of the regulation tech is being tested here and there. No overhaul of the electrical grid has been implemented. We still burn a lot of coal. We still lose a lot of energy in heat. I hope to see more work done in this area soon.

It won't be too much longer and hardware design, as we used to know it, will be remembered alongside the slide rule and the Karnaugh map. You will need to move beyond those familiar bits and bytes into the new world of software centric design.

People who want to take advantage of solar energy in their homes no longer need to install a bolt-on solar-panel system atop their houses -- they can integrate solar-energy-harvesting shingles directing into an existing or new roof instead.

Kaspersky Labs indicated at its February meeting that cyber attacks are far more sophisticated than previous thought. It turns out even air-gapping (disconnecting computers from the Internet to protect against cyber intrusion) isn’t a foolproof way to avoid getting hacked. And Kaspersky implied the NSA is the smartest attacker.

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